I’m really happy with how I spent my first Saturday of summer.

I read and drank iced tea and did some lawn work and listened to a podcast – all without feeling stressed or rushed and without any sense that I had to finish anything.

I hope I can come back to this feeling again and again.

If you believe what the lilacs outside my front door tell you, apparently this spring has been good for them.

Is it weird to make a project out of relaxing?

Probably.

I’m used to being weird though so I’ll carry on.

I need to reset my base level of relaxation.

For too long, my starting level has been tuned too high so I am rarely fully relaxed and I tip into feeling overwhelmed far too easily.

So, I am making a project out of dialing my internal relaxation levels down.

This involves yoga, stretching, journaling, art, meditation, and this morning, it involves sitting in my swing at 7:00am and then having an ice cream cone for breakfast.

Right now, I am sitting on my yoga mat on my patio and drinking iced tea before I write in my journal.

Sure, it’s important to get to my to do list but it’s much more important that I feel ok, that I feel restful, that I dial back my stress levels.

I want to turn down my hypervigilance.

I am seeking ease.

Even though my kids are no longer in school, knowing that tomorrow is the last school day for the year still feels joyous to me.

Things change when kids get out of school – traffic is different, I can hear kids playing near my house, there are ball games at the field nearby, there’s a qualitative difference in the atmosphere.

And I want to really enjoy my summer this year.

Last summer, I was grief-stricken and my mind was foggy and I couldn’t make good plans. Instead, a lot of the time, I just ended up feeling reactive and like I was running from task to task.

I did have bright spots but I also felt really tired instead of rested by the time summer ended. (And don’t even talk to me about the Fall!)

So this year, I am trying to make good plans in advance and I am delegating some stuff and I am trying to prioritize fun.

I haven’t quite figured out how, yet, but it will happen.

After two full weeks of not being able to focus, of not being able to bring the right kind of attention to any given project, I am finally able to work on the things I have been trying to work on.

It’s very weird to not bake to draw the type of energy you need when you need it.

Over the past two weeks, I had multiple projects that I needed to work on. I know that the way to get them done is to settle into one and work away at it until I have made progress and then move on to the next one.

But, for the last two weeks, I couldn’t do that.

I wasn’t procrastinating. I wasn’t choosing not to work on the things. I was sitting at my desk doing…something…but it wasn’t working.

It felt almost like all of my projects had to get out of the same door and instead of filing out in a line, they were getting jammed in the doorway. They weren’t emerging into the space where I could work on them and they weren’t staying in the back of my mind. They were ever-present but still inaccessible.

I did all kinds of bits and pieces of them over the past two weeks, and bits of pieces of other things, but nothing satisfying, nothing complete.

I’m lucky that I am past the point where this would feel like a personal failing. By now, it just feels annoying to me.

But I do need to find a better solution than just waiting it out.

Waiting it out works but it takes way too long.